Tag Archives: Seedlings

Photos from March 30: Lillian planting peas with her grandma, Terry. Turning the soil in the raised beds.

Although its early May, I’ve already been working in my gardens for nearly two months. Often the first trip to the community garden occurs on a warm day in late February or early March and snow may still be on the ground. Many times, we’ve had to brush aside snow and chisel away at the soil to get our St. Patrick’s Day peas planted. But not this year. We had a rather mild winter in Colorado so the soil was uncharacteristically workable in early March. My garden pals and I were thus at Rosedale digging early in the season and the peas went in like butter.

Photos: Toasting St. Patrick’s Day with my mom’s Waterford goblets, picking up free compost and burlap bags at Allegro’s Coffee’s Earth Day Celebration, me posing in front of our robust garlic patch with Marilynn’s garden behind me. She was my neighbor for 17 years and sadly died of lung cancer the day before this visit to our garden on March 16.

By March 16, we’d planted our first round of peas and spinach. A few weeks later, we planted more peas with the help of Terry’s grand daughter Lillian as well as other cold crops including lettuce, carrots, beets, broccoli and more. I was also surprised to find that many crops that typically don’t make it through the winter, survived — cilantro, rosemary, kale, chard, parsley.

Photos from March 16: Ana,Terry and Susan getting ready to plant peas on a very windy March afternoon, our tomato cages all lined up where we plan to plant tomatoes in late May, the garlic patch growing between planks of wood for walking.

We’re off to a good start and busily prepping all the beds for the big warm season planting in just a few short weeks. Although the weather can be deceptively nice in May, we still must restraint ourselves from planting our precious tomatoes, peppers and warm season crops until we’re safely past May 22. Last year, we had about 6 inches of snow around May 20!

Photos from March 31: Free tomato seeds earned as a volunteer at DUG free seed distribution, tomato seedlings planted on March 31, two trays of 12 6 packs of tomatoes and peppers growing under lights and on heat mats.

Honestly, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I am referring to the milk jugs and the new light rack I am using to grow seedlings for my garden. When I found myself asking my garden pals this weekend if they wanted to see my jugs and my rack, I got a few laughs but I didn’t realize how totally funny it sounded until a male garden pal laughed and said, “Yes, I want to see your jugs and your rack!” Oh, geez, this is a slightly dirty spin on my garden projects — which are dirty to begin with!

The exciting news is that my experiment of using milk jugs as little greenhouses has sprouted success. Thank you to hometown Wisconsin friend Maggie Strunk Leyes for inspiring me. Here are two jugs with little sprouts inside:

I am also stoked about my new grow lights which arrived via Amazon last week and have been shining on my happy crop of tomatoes, eggplant and peppers. The green glow of the lights has prompted some to ask if I’m growing marijuana plants. But, although it is legal to grow 6 pot plants per adult in Colorado, I am not growing weed.

April is a heady time of year for me. Passionate discussions about all aspects of gardening (in-person, on the phone, via text message), frequent visits to local nurseries, intersecting projects and conversations, early morning inspirations and a parade of dirty shoes, gloves and digging clothes littering my floors are all signs that my brain and energy are focused on one subject – THE GARDEN. Fortunately, the days are getting longer, I have time to work on a myriad of projects and garden geeks eager to talk and share surround me at every turn.

Making Lacto Bacillus Serum – organic fertilizer

Contacted John Swain, the horticulturalist for the Denver Golf Courses and designer/planter/co-manager of the donation garden at Harvard Gulch Golf Course and passionate home gardener. A winter has come between our last fact filled gardener conversation so we had a lot to talk about. As always, he is a fountain of enthusiasm and information and turned me on to two important sources as well as the benefit of using lacto bacillus serum in the garden (labs for short):

Labs are a workhorse of beneficial bacteria (which is edible) and has multiple applications including — speeding decomposition in the compost pile, unclogging drains, treating powdery mildew on squash plants, eliminating odor in animal bedding and most importantly, “Improves growth of plants when applied as foliar spray and soil drench. Improves their efficiency in uptaking nutrients so naturally, growth is enhanced. With the use of these microorganisms, the nutrients you spray or drench to feed your plants become more bio-available and easily absorbable by the plants. Technically, you can say that plants do not use organic nutrients directly. Microorganisms convert organic nutrients to their inorganic constituents which the plants utilize. Utilizing microbes, you will notice better plant growth and health.” -The Unconvential Farmer.

Labs recipe: I mixed myself up a batch and its still incubating. Its easy to make and the recipe can be viewed on the link about from the Build a Soil website. Basically, you wash rice and take the water and fill a Ball jar about 75% full and cover with a paper towel — make sure air can get in. Store it on top of the refrigerator and after a few days, the liquid will separate. Siphon off the center layer adding 1 part serum to 10 parts milk and put in another container, cover tightly and let sit for another few days. Once curds appear, you can strain the liquid with a cheesecloth (the curds can be fried up and eaten). You add 1 part serum to 20 parts water to spray in the garden. Store in the frig or add molasses to store at room temperature. Stable for about a year.

Garden Hacks

Sprinkle carrot and beet seeds together every few weeks to have a continuous crop

Marijuana growers have to dispose of growing mix are harvesting the plants; the vermiculate and soil less mix is great mixed into raised beds and helps lighten the soil

Dryer lint can be put in the compost pile

I used paint stirrers for marking seeds and plants. Pick them up for free every time I stop at Home Depot or Lowe’s.

Progress at Rosedale Garden – my 19th year in this community garden!

Planted purple and green asparagus in two 8 inch deep trenches this week; once sprouted will cover with 3 inches of dirt

Peas planted on March 15 finally sprouted, planted a third row on April 7

Prepped more beds and mapped out where everything is going

Seeded pumpkin bed with winter wheat; won’t be planting there for two months

Garlic planted in frozen soil in late December is up and growing; looks like its going to make it!

Susan has been making videos of me at the garden and I am learning how to edit them!

Opening up the St. Philip Donation Garden

Scheduled a work day for this Sunday to get started prepping the beds at St. Philip.

One volunteer came and we cleaned up two beds, added fresh compost and planted peas, onions and a variety of cold crops. Watered and talked about plans.

Three plots are spoken for with another two gals potentially interested in volunteering in the donation beds.

This is our third year and I’m sorry that I’ve lost my partner of the first two years, Lerae Schnickel to another church ministry. She was great to work with and its hard to move forward without her support.

Helping at a Jovial Gardens Neighborhood Project

Jovial Gardens is a really cool Denver-based organization that helps build gardens in neighborhoods. One of their goals is to decrease food scarcity in the urban environment and grow food for local food banks. The group originally started in Edgewater, a suburb on Denver, and organized gardens in more than 40 yards in the neighborhood. https://jovialconcepts.org/about-us/

My friend and master gardener, Teri Connelly is working with Jovial to install gardens in the yards of a number of her neighbors in Arvada. Today, I had the chance to visit on a work day and saw work in progress in at least 6 yards. The enthusiasm and excitement of the neighbors and volunteers was awesome. Teri shared that in one front yard garden they harvested almost a 1000 pounds of organic produce last year. I would love to start such a program in my neighborhood (Trailmark) in Littleton.

Seedling Update on the Home Front

My experiment of seeding tomatoes and peppers for the first time has had mixed results. All but one of the 12 varieties of tomatoes I planted has sprouted. It took less than a week. I learned that they need a heat mat and lights!

8 of 11 peppers sprouted this week. More time needed?

The tomatoes are very leggy but John Swain told me that they need grow lights and that its not too late for them to stabilize.

I only have one grow light so I’ve set it up for 14 hours alternatively above the trays of peppers, then the tomatoes. Ordered a 4 foot rack with light from Amazon yesterday so hope it arrives this week.

Nothing has sprouted in the milk jugs I planted last week. Time will tell

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Hi, I am an avid gardener both at home and at Rosedale Community Garden where I've had a plot for 19 years. I am very interested in learning more about gardening, how to preserve it, incorporating farm fresh produce into my cooking and living a healthy lifestyle. In addition, I am a Master Community Gardener through Denver Urban Gardens and am a shareholder at the Chatfield CSA. In 2015, I spearheaded an effort to start a community donation garden at St. Philip's Lutheran Church -- a project I will share on my blog. I am eager to share what I've learned and the adventures I had learning new things and interacting with the garden community.